Knowledge-to-Action Guides: Preparing Families to Be Partners in Making Educational Decisions

Posted in application of the KU Faculty's Open Access policy

Changes in everyday mobility in England since the 1940s: A case study

Everyday mobility is usually neglected in academic studies of population movement. This paper argues that it deserves greater attention, and that interaction between everyday mobility and residential migration is increasingly significant. Data on changes in everyday mobility since the 1940s have been collected through a series of surveys and in-depth interviews. This paper presents results from a case study of the everyday mobility of children aged 10/11 in Lancaster, NW England. Analysis of changes in the distance travelled, the time spent travelling, the mode of transport used and of travel companions shows that although there have been major and obvious changes in transport technology, and in the structure of economy and society, since the 1940s, many aspects of everyday mobility did not change. For many everyday activities the distances over which children travel have changed little, the time taken in travelling for everyday mobility has changed less, and gender differentials in both the mode of transport used and travel companions are stable over time. The most significant change is the restrictive influence of the fear of crime.La mobilité quotidienne est généralement négligée dans les études universitaires du mouvement de la population. Cet article affirme qu’elle mérite plus d’attention, et que l’interaction entre mobilité quotidienne et migration résidentielle est de plus en plus significative. Les données concernant l’évolution de la mobilité quotidienne depuis les années quarante ont été rassemblées au moyen d’une série de sondages et d’entrevues en profondeur. Cet article présente les résultats d’une étude de cas de la mobilité quotidienne des enfants de dix à onze ans à Lancaster, au nord-ouest de l’Angleterre. L’analyse des changements en termes de distance parcourue, de durée, de moyen de transport utilisé et de compagnons de voyage, démontre qu’en dépit d’évidentes et significatives modifications dans la technologie des transports et la structure de l’économie et de la société depuis les années quarante, un grand nombre d’aspects de la mobilité quotidienne n’ont pas évolué. Pour beaucoup d’activités quotidiennes, les distances parcourues par les enfants ont peu changé, le temps qu’ils y consacrent encore moins, et les différences entre hommes et femmes, non seulement en ce qui concerne le mode de transport utilisé, mais aussi par rapport aux compagnons de voyage, sont restées stables au cours du temps. Le changement le plus significatif est l’influence restrictive de la peur du crime

Measuring the quality of family-professional partnerships in special education services

This is the published version, also found here: http://cec.metapress.com/content/jr8655lg61k1n440/?p=edbc223bb2fb4291b6b55663014711a2&pi=3One difficulty in monitoring the quality of family-professional partnerships has been the lack of a psychometrically acceptable and sufficiently general instrument with which to assess them. The current work describes the development of the Family-Professional Partnership Scale, which assesses parents' perceptions of the importance of and their satisfaction with family-professional partnerships. Indicators were constructed from qualitative research on families with children with and without disabilities, and the scale was refined across two field tests that included families with children with a wide range of ages and disability types and severity. Both the 18-item overall scale and the two 9-item subscales demonstrated excellent psychometric properties. The possible uses of this scale in future research and service delivery are discus

Dynamical torque in CoxFe3–xO4 nanocube thin films characterized by femtosecond magneto-optics : a π-shift control of the magnetization precession

RT and PA would like to thank the Nuffield Foundation (ref. URB40673), the Physics Trust, and the Student Council of the School of Physics and Astronomy at St Andrews to support RT’s research internships. IB and PA acknowledge support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, ref. EP/H010033/1).For spintronic devices excited by a sudden magnetic or optical perturbation, the torque acting on the magnetization plays a key role in its precession and damping. However the torque itself can be a dynamical quantity via the time dependent anisotropies of the system. A challenging problem for applications is then to disentangle the relative importance of various sources of anisotropies in the dynamical torque, such as the dipolar field, the crystal structure or the shape of the particular interacting magnetic nanostructures. Here, we take advantage of a range of colloidal cobalt ferrite nano-cubes assembled in 2D thin films under controlled magnetic fields to demonstrate that the phase φprec of the precession carries a strong signature of the dynamical anisotropies. Performing femtosecond magneto-optics, we show that φprec displays a π-shift for a particular angle θH of an external static magnetic field H. θH is controlled with the cobalt concentration, the laser intensity as well as the inter-particles interactions. Importantly it is shown that the shape anisotropy, which strongly departs from the one of equivalent bulk thin films or individual non-interacting nanoparticles, reveals the essential role played by the interparticles collective effects. This work shows the reliability of a non-invasive optical approach to characterize the dynamical torque in high density magnetic recording media made of organized and interacting nanoparticles.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Positive Adaptation and Coping Strengths of Families who have Children with Disabilities

Families who have a member with a disability have long been objects of pity. Society as a whole tends to view the presence of a child with a disability as an unutterable tragedy from which the family may never recover. Researchers and service providers in the field of developmental disabilities have mirrored this societal perception, and tend to view the family as a whole as embroiled in a series of acute crises interspersed with chronic sorrow (Olshansky, 1962). Thus the task of family support is seen as ameliorating the deadly pall of tragedy that hangs over the family. The day-to-day experiences of many thoughtful service providers, however, cas

Regulation of Carotenoid Composition and Shoot Branching in Arabidopsis by a Chromatin Modifying Histone Methyltransferase, SDG8

Carotenoid pigments are critical for plant survival, and carotenoid composition is tuned to the developmental stage, tissue, and to environmental stimuli. We report the cloning of the CAROTENOID CHLOROPLAST REGULATORY1 (CCR1) gene. The ccr1 mutant has increased shoot branching and altered carotenoid composition, namely, reduced lutein in leaves and accumulation of cis-carotenes in dark-grown seedlings. The CCR1 gene was previously isolated as EARLY FLOWERING IN SHORT DAYS and encodes a histone methyltransferase (SET DOMAIN GROUP 8) that methylates histone H3 on Lys 4 and/or 36 (H3K4 and H3K36). ccr1 plants show reduced trimethyl-H3K4 and increased dimethyl-H3K4 surrounding the CAROTENOID ISOMERASE (CRTISO) translation start site, which correlates with low levels of CRTISO mRNA. Microarrays of ccr1 revealed the downregulation of 85 genes, including CRTISO and genes associated with signaling and development, and upregulation of just 28 genes. The reduction in CRTISO transcript abundance explains the altered carotenoid profile. The changes in shoot branching are additive with more axillary branching mutants, but the altered carotenoid profile may partially affect shoot branching, potentially by perturbed biosynthesis of the carotenoid substrates of strigolactones. These results are consistent with SDG8 regulating shoot meristem activity and carotenoid biosynthesis by modifying the chromatin surrounding key genes, including CRTISO. Thus, the level of lutein, the most abundant carotenoid in higher plants that is critical for photosynthesis and photoprotection, appears to be regulated by a chromatin modifying enzyme in Arabidopsis thaliana

Self-trapping and excited state absorption in fluorene homo-polymer and copolymers with benzothiadiazole and tri-phenylamine

We thank the EPSRC [EP/J009318/1 and EP/J009016/1] for funding. MJP thanks the European Research Council (ERC) for funding under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant No. 258990.Excited state absorption (ESA) is studied using time-dependent density functional theory and compared with experiments performed in dilute solutions. The molecules investigated are a fluorene pentamer, polyfluorene F8, the alternating F8 copolymer with benzothiadiazole F8BT, and two blue-emitting random copolymers F8PFB and F8TFB. Calculated and measured spectra show qualitatively comparable results. The ESA cross-section of co-polymers at its maximum is about three times lower than that of F8. The ESA spectra are found to change little upon structural relaxation of the excited state, or change in the order of sub-units in a co-polymer, for all studied molecules. In all these molecules, the strongest ESA transition is found to arise from the same electronic process, exhibiting a reversal of the charge parity. In addition, F8PFB and F8TFB are found to possess almost identical electronic behaviour.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe